An Englishman was traveling with an American through the corn belt. "My dear man," he said, "what are you doing with all this corn?"

"Well," said the American, "we eat what we can and what we can't, we can."

The Englishman found this hilarious. As soon as he was back in London he told his friends in the club about the abundance of corn and his question about it.

"And you know what the Yankee said?" he asked. " 'We eat as much as we can and what we cannot eat we put into tins.'